


5 Things from the 21st Century Steve Rogers Treasured the Most (Plus One)

by marmota_b



Series: Painkiller [7]
Category: Avengers (Comics), Captain America (Comics), Highlander: The Series, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Punisher (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Bucky Bear - Freeform, Catholic Steve Rogers, Crossover, Fluff, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 00:58:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16075049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmota_b/pseuds/marmota_b
Summary: Exactly what it says on the tin, placed inside my Painkiller AU.





	5 Things from the 21st Century Steve Rogers Treasured the Most (Plus One)

**Author's Note:**

> The last... possibly more than a year... has been a bit crazy, and I have not really written much of anything, so I was really glad when inspiration struck at least for finishing this mostly fluffy thing I started in April. So here goes, another partial insight into the Painkiller AU.

**1\. The Not-Quite-Gideon Bible**

It had been in the drawer in SHIELD’s elaborately fake room, a painstakingly made copy of a genuine 1940s Gideon Bible, and Steve had never so much as glanced at it before he had seen through the ruse. After that, after settling down a bit and after finding out that his old well-thumbed Bible was on display in the Smithsonian Museum (a very bad use of a study Bible, he thought, but did not argue), he had claimed that copy for himself. It had been literally made for him, after all. He had also made sure to thank the two brilliant graphic technicians who had made it – Ralph Gorman and Terry Williams –, as soon as he wheedled their names out of Fury.

He missed the old one, the “brick” as Monty had called it while Steve had continued hauling it across Europe – it had been his father’s before him, and he missed the wordings he was used to. But this one stood for the lengths all the people in this new century had gone to, and kept going to, to make the transition easier for him. And that was precious in itself. His mother had taught him, years and years ago, before he had read that lesson for himself, that people mattered more than material possessions; and it was a lesson he had taken to heart at an early age.

Which was why, some years later, he gave that copy to Frank when Frank needed it more than him.

 

 

**2\. Bucky Bear**

 

Doctor Goodman had told him during one of the sessions that sometimes it helped some people to hug a stuffed animal when they were feeling bad. In a moment of weakness that could not have been caused by consumption of alcohol on his part but possibly had been caused by consumption of alcohol on Tony’s part, he told Tony.

Tony was no supersoldier, but he still could consume more alcohol before losing most of his mental capacities than anyone else Steve had ever met, Howard included. The difference between old Tony drinking a lot and today’s Tony drinking a lot, Steve understood, was that today’s Tony only ever did it in company with trusted friends who could be relied on to not drink themselves senseless. Which made Steve ideal, and brought them close much faster than he had originally feared.

“Have you ever designed a teddy bear?” Tony asked.

“I’m an artist, not a toy designer,” Steve reminded him. “Although I’m sure I would not have minded even if I had got a job as the latter, jobs were pretty scarce before the war.”

“No, I meant in Build-A-Bear,” Tony said. “But now you mention it, you can’t have, it wasn’t around yet in your time. We definitely have to go to Build-A-Bear. In the interest of catching you up.”

On the spot the next day, Steve slowly realised it wasn’t so much in the interest of catching him up as in the interest of catching _Tony_ up. Because it turned out Tony definitely wasn’t young enough to have had this experience with his parents himself. And he was definitely enjoying it way too much, designing a bear he called Bucky Bear, based not on Bucky as Steve had known him but the silly kid sidekick from those stupid old comics.

But maybe that was why Steve had not protested when Tony had pressured him into accepting the teddy as a gift.

Come to think of it, Tony had probably never had even _similar_ experiences with his parents, and so Steve pressured him into accepting the rather generic teddy _he_ had designed.

From then on, Steady (Tony was into terrible puns) sat in a place of honour and safety in Tony’s lab, next to his old arc reactor. More often than not, Bucky Bear was to be found in Steve’s armchair or bed wherever Steve was to be found, and Steve could not find it in himself to be embarrassed by it.

 

 

**3\. The Winter Coat**

 

It went like this:

Steve found out that while his metabolism made him pretty much immune to the adverse effects of cold on his health and life, it did not safeguard him from the adverse effects it had on his _mind_.

And he shivered. A lot.

Maybe the fact he had been wearing his leather jacket at the time had had something to do with it, too, although he was certain it wasn’t the only factor. Cold air brought with it memories that were still recent and still mind-numbingly frightening. In retrospect, he realised, with some surprise, how much the idea that you made do with what you had had been drilled into him by years of poverty, and how much that translated into his mental processes as well. He was terrified of the cold. He was prepared to muddle through it.

Janet? Janet wasn’t cut out that way. Janet knew how to treat herself. Janet had been through her own private hellhole and come out of it with the conclusion that the best revenge was living well.

And because they were in London at the time, she dragged him to Saville Row, and that was how Steve eventually got the first bespoke winter coat of his life. First and, as far as he was concerned, the last, because this thing was made to last.

He was ever so slightly terrified by the fact that it possibly cost more money than both his parents had made in all their lives. But.

The best revenge was living well, and sometimes that included taking care of yourself so that you would be all that better prepared to take care of others. Never again would he have to scrape money together in order to keep warm in winter. He was sure that was something his mother, who had scraped money together to keep him _alive_ but still found the money, time and will to make _her_ favourite Irish-style pancakes every now and then, would have liked the thought of.

And it was the thought, not the price, it was Janet’s gesture and understanding, that made the coat one of his most treasured new possessions.

 

 

**4\. The Gingerbread Heart**

 

The most terrifying thing Steve had ever seen Natasha do was shooting a fairground gun at an array of gingerbread hearts in Poland.

They had been strolling through a fairground that had sprung up during a religious holiday, enjoying one of those rare moments of peace and (completely relative) quiet, Natasha arm in arm with Clint. The guy manning the stand called at Clint something that clearly meant “a heart for your sweetheart” or something along those lines.

There were several seconds of non-verbal communication between Clint and Natasha, and then she extricated herself from him, strode up to the stand and paid for three shots.

And Steve _knew_ how it would go, of course he knew it, but still it was absolutely terrifying to see her proceed to shoot that one determining shot and then nail down two of the gingerbread hearts, because he had never before seen anyone pull that off in real life.

Also, smitten Clint was one of the cutest things he’d ever seen in his life.

Natasha walked back to them and gave them a heart each. He never saw what the one she gave Clint said, but his said _Dla najlepszego brata_ , and as an only child himself, he could not have been prouder.

 

 

**5\. Frank’s Badge**

 

He held it in his palm before the wall of black stone covered in names, and all the way home in Frank’s van. It had warmed up in his hand, and his palm had grown sweaty.

He had never fought in the war Frank had fought in, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it when the door to his apartment closed after him. He laid it down on the kitchen table, and it sat there for close to two months, in his sight all the time, a small jarring reminder of what he had been through with the man, until it slowly became part of the landscape. When he realised that, he moved it to his computer table. After two more months, the bedside table.

Then Frank became Painkiller, and his friend, the first friend in this century who truly shared his faith, and suddenly Steve knew exactly what to do with the badge.

Now it sat in the carved wooden box he had gotten from the Resistance fighters in Bohemia, together with his mother’s ring, his father’s bottle-opener (now rendered mostly obsolete with plastic bottles), the picture of St. Stephen he had gotten from Father McEntegart when he was five, the small tin whistle Bucky had given him when they were eight, and a stub of a pencil Peggy had once given him in London: each of those objects more a symbol than anything else.

Unlike the other tokens, this one was taken out into the wide world a few times; and there it was for some hours, pinned to the chest of a Navy blue uniform his friend once again wore with honour, only to be placed back in Steve’s palm once Frank changed back into black.

(Tony made a point of playing that AC/DC song at those times. Frank made a point of keeping his face completely passive all through it and then slaying Tony with a terrible pun. Steve made a point of complaining about the alleged music, but he would not have them any other way.)

 

 

**+1. The Douay-Rheims Bible (Challoner’s revision, New-York-published)**

 

Steve had had no intention of visiting the Captain America permanent exhibit, but once the Smithsonian had finally agreed that the rest of the Howling Commandos deserved a place in the institution as well, despite not being all American (meh), he went. He was accompanied by Frank, who was curious to see what changes had been made to the exhibit since he had visited many years earlier with his parents, and Adam, who was just generally curious and in no small part gleeful about the fact that one of the subjects of the exhibition was standing next to him. Steve could relate to that sentiment, from Adam in particular.

“You’ve got to understand,” Frank told Steve rather apologetically, “it was a pretty big deal for them, what with you being from an immigrant family, and Catholic, and all that.”

Steve thought he had come to peace with having been a bit of an idol for young Frank Castiglione, future Marine. Mainly because Frank Castle, former Marine instructor, did not shy away from calling him an idiot and many more inventive (and sometimes Sicilian and sometimes Czech) names if he was being an idiot now.

So they found it there, his old Bible, open on the page in John where Jesus says “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Apparently, it had been open on that page for so long that the museum now feared breaking the spine if they tried to turn the pages or close the book.

“Really, though,” Steve reflected, “John 3, 16 would be so much better.”

Had Frank not been a man about six foot four tall, mostly muscle, the sound he made would have definitely been called a giggle. It was giddy and almost lightheaded, and Steve knew exactly where it came from.

Adam looked thoughtful for quite a long time.

“I bet you could find it on Archive.org, though,” he said, when they finally exited the room.

There was a tacit understanding that that really was the afterthought it sounded like.

But it was how Steve, with the help of Ralph and Terry, ended up having his old Bible – or at least one much like it – back.

**Author's Note:**

> Ralph Gorman and Terry Williams are, basically, what Fitzsimmons would be if they were instead creating fake passports. Their creative talents are wasted most of the time on that kind of thing, and they relish every opportunity to bite into juicier projects. (If you want to picture Terry like _Jessica_ Williams, feel free to do so; I do.)
> 
> I lifted Steve’s feelings about cold from Coneycat’s fantastic [Housemates universe](https://archiveofourown.org/series/14925).
> 
> If you’re a regular reader, have you read [Condiments](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4229829), Transposable_Element’s remix of my story [The Morning After](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3370310)? I loved it, with one reservation: I did not imagine Steve’s mother’s recipe for pancakes to be the typical American one. I had looked up what Irish pancakes are like, and they’re apparently nothing like it, they’re crepe-thin and sprinkled with lemon juice. So this here is a reconciliation of the two mental images of pancakes: Steve was into pancakes American-style, and that’s the recipe he has learned, but his mother also enjoyed the traditional Irish ones every now and then (presumably [on Pancake Tuesday](http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/ACalend/ShroveTues.html)).
> 
> [Father McEntegart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Joseph_McEntegart) is a happy accident of quick Google research, an Irish priest in New York who did charity work for children in the 20s (later ~~arch~~ bishop of Brooklyn, which is why I found him quickly). I’m assuming that a constantly sick partial orphan might be in need of that...  
> (I'm not Catholic myself, nor American, and it probably shows.)


End file.
